


i started all the wars

by carrythesky



Category: The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst, Denial of Feelings, F/M, Heavy Angst, KissGate 2k17
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-14
Updated: 2017-11-14
Packaged: 2019-02-02 06:28:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12721380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carrythesky/pseuds/carrythesky
Summary: (Turns out fighting’s easy, once you start. The problem is that he’s never learned how to stop.)





	i started all the wars

He’s ten years old when he throws his first punch. Mickey Sawyer gets in the new kid’s face one morning at school, tugs at the boy’s long hair and laughs when his eyes screw up tight, _told you uptown boys are pussies -_

 

Frank tackles him to the ground before he can think, fire roaring in his veins as he punches Mickey square in the face. Something cracks and when he pulls his hand back his knuckles are red.

 

“He gets this from you,” his mother says in the car on the drive home, fixing her husband with a knowing stare. Frank’s father just smirks.

 

“Takin’ justice into his own hands. Ain’t that right, Frankie?”

 

Frank stares down at his bloodied fist and feels something swell in his chest, solid and warm and _good._ “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, that’s right.”

 

\-----

 

(Turns out fighting’s easy, once you start. The problem is that he’s never learned how to stop.)

 

\-----

 

Death sounds differently here than it did in the desert. He’s not sure when it happens, when the cacophony of war turns into something else, something intimate. There’s a rhythm to it now, a cadence. Less and more. Frank’s always been a slow learner but this comes easy like breathing, a reflex.

 

He adapts.

 

Tonight’s dance is a familiar one, asphalt and dirt crunching beneath boots, breath hissing through gritted teeth as he scuffles with his mark, ducks a punch and swings out wildly with his own fist. The man is big, bigger than him and probably stronger too, but it doesn’t matter. Strong men bleed same as weak, he thinks, and that’s when he twists, swipes his KA-BAR from his vest and buries it beneath this shitbag’s sternum.

 

They go down together, Frank pinning a knee to the man’s chest and pushing, grinding his back into the dirt. The man screams, fingers scrabbling for the knife but Frank gets there first. In one fluid motion he yanks it out and presses the point to the man’s jugular.

 

“I’m not gonna ask you again,” he rasps. “How many of you are there?”

 

The piece of scum actually _grins_ , so Frank digs his knee into the open knife wound, relishes the sound of anguish that wheezes from his victim’s lungs. “How many?”

 

“Enough,” the man groans. There’s pain in his eyes but it’s his next words, spit through clenched and bloody teeth, that turn Frank’s blood to ice. “Enough to get the job done, bitch is already living on borrowed time -”

 

Frank sees red. With one upwards thrust he slits the throat, pries open the windpipe and _squeezes_ and doesn’t stop, not even when the body falls still. There’s a rushing sound in his ears, fractured like radio static and it takes him a moment to realize that’s him, breathing.

 

He stays until the blood on his hands has dried.

 

\-----

 

“You’ve been busy.”

 

She doesn’t seem surprised to see him. Some distant part of himself realizes this is _bad_ , that she should probably be more afraid of him than she is and he needs to leave now while he still can, but he doesn’t. The breeze coming off the water smells like salt and sewage, like the rest of the city, rotten from the outside in but he breathes it in anyways. Just another reminder of all the work he still has to do.

 

She’s staring at him with those bright eyes so he spits his words out quickly, glances sharply away before he loses what little nerve he still has. “Don’t have the luxury of taking time off.”

 

“Cut the bullshit, Frank.”

 

“Karen -”

 

“I told you,” she says, “I told you to let this go -”

 

“Yeah, well, guess I didn’t listen.” He refuses to meet her gaze, stares out across the water and imagines it pulling him under, those cold waves finally giving him release. He knows how to fight, knows how to _hurt_ but this is a different kind of pain, not enough to bleed but enough to scar. It’s too much so he squeezes his eyes shut, buries it deep and when he opens them again he’s nothing but hard edges, all Punisher.

 

“This piece of shit was coming for you, do you get that? Do you -” he cuts off, fingers twitching rapid-fire against his leg, a battle drum, a warning. “I don’t give a fuck if I hurt your feelings, you got that? I care about keeping you safe. I care about keeping you _alive_ -”

 

“Don’t do that,” she growls, “don’t put this on me. I never asked you to do this, Frank, I never -”

 

“No one asks me to do shit, you hear me? Someone I care about is in danger, I do something about it. End of story.”

 

“So where does that end, Frank?” she says, voice fracturing. “Because I look at you and my heart… _breaks_ , because all I can see is just this endless, echoing loneliness. That’s it, nothing else. I can’t see the end of this road.”

 

Each word is like a knife in his chest, twisting against all the soft and vulnerable places he’s kept locked down tight for so long but he’s not surprised. She’s always known how to tear down his defenses, burrow straight to the most intimate parts of his soul. He just has to hold out a bit longer, that’s all. Chin up, Frankie, his father used to say. Chin up, get to work.

 

“What do you want, Karen?” He hears how fragile his voice sounds and hopes to christ she can’t. “What should I do, should I let it go?”

 

“No, but I…” she sinks her face into her hands, rakes a hand through her hair and when she comes up for air her eyes are red. “I want there to be an _after_.”

 

Something inside him splinters. Frank Castle might have deserved happiness but this thing wearing his face and living in his skin is not Frank Castle, doesn’t deserve Karen Page’s tears and certainly not her love.

 

He feels as broken as she looks and before he can talk himself down he does something he promised he’d never do. He leans in, presses his lips to the soft hollow of her cheek, and pretends.

 

 _I love you,_ he wants to say.

 

“I have to go,” he says instead. He doesn’t look back as he walks away.

 

\-----

 

(Chin up, Frankie.

 

Get to work.)


End file.
